Sam held back from saying anything more, from continuing the conversation they’d had at the crime scene until they’d been on the highway for a little while. Dean had gotten to listen to one side of Led Zeppelin Three and the lyrics to “Since I’ve Been Loving You” got to Sam. (Just like they always did.)

“You can’t do that to me again,” Sam said before he even knew he was saying it.

Dean looked surprised that he’d said anything, probably had thought he had fallen asleep. Finally Dean answered, “I had a plan.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t work,” Sam said, turning fully towards his brother examining the side of his face for the unspoken response. There it was, and it was a lot worse than just not having a plan, he just hadn’t cared in that moment. And Sam has been there, done that, felt that yawning pit of despair, but he hadn’t thought Dean was there. What kind of partner was he that he didn’t know that?

Dean didn’t say anything, except his jaw clenching and unclenching like he was chewing on the words he should have been saying.

“Is it really so bad that you want to off yourself? Right in front of me like that?” Sam asked, putting a little heat behind his words so Dean would know he meant it. That he wan’t just being a brat, but that he was worried as shit now.

“I’m just dragging you down, you’d be better off with me,” Dean said.

Dean’s words cause a red curtain to be pulled down around Sam, he was furious, enraged and literally seeing red. “That’s bullshit, you pull over up here right now. Right the fuck now, Dean.”

Dean sighed and pulled over, but didn’t make any moves to turn the Impala off.

Sam couldn’t look at him, could barely speak for how angry he was. How many years of this—you’d think he’d be used to it by now. “You said you just wanted a win. How about this? You and me still here fighting the good fight together? But I guess that’s not enough for you?”

“It is…Sammy, it is, I just couldn’t deal with losing them both like that,” Dean said, sounding so lost and hopeless that Sam almost gave in and looked at him, or gathered him into his arms then and there. But that red curtain of anger still held him back, he needed to push this all the way and get it all out or he was going to burn up from the inside out.

“I know, I lost them too, remember?” Sam said, opening his door and jumping out. He slammed it with a satisfying thud and window rattle that he knew would get Dean out of the car and yelling at him.

The Impala engine abruptly shut off and Dean’s door creaked open and shut. “How many goddamn times do I have to tell you not to slam it like that?” Dean yelled across the roof, eyes blazing with anger.

“Well, if you’d stayed dead like you wanted then it wouldn’t matter much now would it?” Sam yelled back.

“I didn’t want to stay dead, that’s not what that was about, I was trying to save that kid,” Dean yelled back.

“So when I want to die and save the world from demons, you get to stop that, or when I get gut shot you kill yourself to make a deal with Billie, or you fucking just sell your soul. But when you feel like it you…you can just straight up kill yourself, right in front of me, like it’s no big deal,” Sam finished with a big gesture of his arms waving through the air like he was trying to flag down a rescue. God did they ever need one right now.

“It isn’t a big deal, not like you dying is, Sam,” Dean said, so quietly Sam could barely hear his brother’s words over the passing traffic noise.

“Maybe not to you, but it is to me. You think you’re nothing, worthless, what was it you said…dragging me down. But that’s not what you are to me,” Sam said, feeling desperate for how badly he needed Dean to understand this, it felt like it was maybe his last chance. If his brother was so far down this rabbit hole maybe he’d never get him back.

“What am I then?” Dean asked, arms crossed over his chest and chin stuck out a little defiantly.

“The opposite of all that! Damnit, Dean don’t you get it by now? You’re everything to me,” Sam said and turned away from Dean’s stunned expression. “I just wish that it mattered to you like I thought it used to.” Sam closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest, trying to steady himself, to hold in the sob that wanted to escape. He noticed the sound of Dean’s boots in the gravel a moment too late.

“I didn’t get my return from being dead hug,” Dean said, holding his arms out wide.

“Maybe I didn’t want to give you one this time,” Sam said, holding his arms around himself even tighter.

Dean made grabby motions with his hands and wiggled his eyebrows. “C’mon, bring it in here.”

Sam relented, folding himself around Dean entirely, enveloping his whole body, covering it, protecting it. Reassuring himself Dean was still all there. Dean’s face was smashed against his neck and Sam could feel his lips moving on his skin. Dean was saying something but he couldn’t hear it.

“What? Say it again, please, Dean,” Sam whispered into the top of Dean’s hair, still holding on tight enough to leave bruises.

“I’m sorry, Sammy. I got it stuck in my head you’d be better off without me, and it kinda snowballed from there.”

“I’m sorry too, I wish I’d known where your head was at. I’ve been there myself, might have done things differently.”

“What, like book a week of visits with Mia so we can work all our shit out?” Dean snarked into Sam’s neck, where Sam could feel his brother’s slow shit-eating grin. Sam barely held off on punching Dean and just hugged him even tighter for a moment.

“Dean, I thought you were dead, for good, just gone…” Sam felt his body deflate with that idea, reliving the yawning pit of unfathomable loss he’d been at the edge of just an hour ago.

“And?” Dean asked.

“And, I don’t know what I would have done next,” Sam said, voice trailing off into the nothing that he’d felt in that moment.

“You woulda been fine,” Dean said.

Sam made a scoffing noise that came from somewhere deep down in his depths, where he knew how things would have really gone. “The other day you asked me to have faith enough for both of us, that’s one thing, I can totally do that. But carry on in the life without you here fighting alongside me? That I can’t do.”

“That’s the only place where I do still have faith. I’ve still got it in you,” Dean said.

As much as he tried to fight it down, Sam’s heart soared at his brother’s words. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think of what to say, so he answered in the only way he knew his brother would understand. He brought their lips together and kissed Dean thoroughly and deeply right there on the side of the road with the semis and mini-vans whizzing by.

The desperation of I-nearly-lost-you-again overwhelmed him and he pushed himself further into the kiss, opening and softening as Dean responded in kind. His brother took and gave and they matched each other fluidly move for move, gift for gift returned. They finally pulled back from each other, panting for breath.

Dean looked up at him, eyes twinkling with a little extra moisture that no one would mention, especially since Sam could feel the same in his own eyes.

“Want to stop somewhere for the night, or push on through to home?” Dean asked, hand still curled around the back of Sam’s neck, fingers brushing softly through his curls.

“If you’re up for it, home please,” Sam said, knowing that his brother probably needed the quiet of the road at night to sort himself out the rest of the way.

Sam fell asleep with his head against the window, his heart soothed with his brother’s words and his lips still tingling with their kiss.